Thursday, 22 December 2016

Algiers road floods

A day of rain was enough, Wednesday evening, to paralyze the traffic on the main roads of the capital. Thus, the highway linking Dar El Beida to Zeralda, often saturated at the end of the day, was flooded at Ben Aknoun, just before the exit ramp to the 5-July stadium. A huge cork was formed several kilometers to the airport of Algiers. Motorists spent several hours stuck in their vehicles to wait, without any information.

At the origin of this flood, the sanitation looks obstructed by the detritus carried by the rainwater, according to explanations provided by the officials of the wilaya.

The turn of the Ben Aknoun highway, located in a hollow that facilitates the accumulation of water, has become a symbol of the incompetence of the authorities in the management of the basic infrastructure of the country. It also illustrates the unforgivable negligence of the authorities in dealing with citizens' problems. Instead of definitively fixing the problem, they are satisfied each time of operation of tinkering and do-it-yourself. A recurring problem in Algiers, which has not taken the lesson of the murderous floods of 2001.